5/2/09
Author: Doug
After crossing the banks from Great Sale we pulled into Old Bahama Bay Marina, where they put us only one slip away from the spot they put us in when we were there a month before. The boys and Jen swam in the great pool they have there, while I did an engine check to get us ready for the Gulf Stream. I also gave the boat a good fresh water washdown, its first in a couple of weeks in this dry country. They charge you a flat ten dollars a day for water at OBB, so I made sure to get my money's worth. Right after I finished it rained like crazy. Go figure.
While we were there we met up with a few people we had seen in various anchorages on our trip, including Bill and Ruth on Happy Ours, a Krogen whaleback and Sheldon and Sharon on Toi Boat, a 62 foot motor yacht. We all talked about the great forecast we had for the next day's crossing. One of the best things about cruising is the sense of community we feel with other boaters, everyone helps everyone else out. The trawler people really stick together.
The next day we had an really comfortable stream crossing, the forecast was for two feet or less, 10 knots from the SE. For the most part NOAA was right on the money, though it was a little rough for an hour or so on the Eastern edge of the stream. It was calm enough that we went North with the flow of stream and came in at the St. Lucie inlet rather than Lake Worth, which made for an 11 mile longer crossing but meant that we didn't have to go up the ICW from Lake Worth to Stuart and shortened our trip by a day.
The Coast Guard was boarding boats about 20 miles East of the US coast, they stopped all three boats that left with us, but we somehow managed to slip through the net.
It was real culture shock leaving the slow, friendly, comfortable pace of the Bahamas then coming through the inlet passed, buzzed and waked by every sort of imaginable high speed vessel from huge sportfisherman and bleach jug boats down to center consoles. I was white knuckled.
About two miles out of the inlet we narrowly avoided a serious collision with some fool in a bow rider type cruiser. He wasn't paying attention and came up on us so fast I couldn't maneuver out of his way. He was approaching from our port so we had right of way, though I doubt if he knows, or cares about the rules of the road. I had to give him a blast with our air horn to wake him up and he swerved aft of us at the last possible second, missing us by maybe 10 feet. He hung both our trolled fishing lines. If he had hit us someone would have died, most likely him as Morgan weighs 25,000 pounds and her hull is an inch thick. There is a special place in hell for him, I'm sure.
We spent that night at Peck lake. Amazingly, the boys were too tired to go to the beach and just swam off the boat for a while.
Author: Doug
After crossing the banks from Great Sale we pulled into Old Bahama Bay Marina, where they put us only one slip away from the spot they put us in when we were there a month before. The boys and Jen swam in the great pool they have there, while I did an engine check to get us ready for the Gulf Stream. I also gave the boat a good fresh water washdown, its first in a couple of weeks in this dry country. They charge you a flat ten dollars a day for water at OBB, so I made sure to get my money's worth. Right after I finished it rained like crazy. Go figure.
While we were there we met up with a few people we had seen in various anchorages on our trip, including Bill and Ruth on Happy Ours, a Krogen whaleback and Sheldon and Sharon on Toi Boat, a 62 foot motor yacht. We all talked about the great forecast we had for the next day's crossing. One of the best things about cruising is the sense of community we feel with other boaters, everyone helps everyone else out. The trawler people really stick together.
The next day we had an really comfortable stream crossing, the forecast was for two feet or less, 10 knots from the SE. For the most part NOAA was right on the money, though it was a little rough for an hour or so on the Eastern edge of the stream. It was calm enough that we went North with the flow of stream and came in at the St. Lucie inlet rather than Lake Worth, which made for an 11 mile longer crossing but meant that we didn't have to go up the ICW from Lake Worth to Stuart and shortened our trip by a day.
The Coast Guard was boarding boats about 20 miles East of the US coast, they stopped all three boats that left with us, but we somehow managed to slip through the net.
It was real culture shock leaving the slow, friendly, comfortable pace of the Bahamas then coming through the inlet passed, buzzed and waked by every sort of imaginable high speed vessel from huge sportfisherman and bleach jug boats down to center consoles. I was white knuckled.
About two miles out of the inlet we narrowly avoided a serious collision with some fool in a bow rider type cruiser. He wasn't paying attention and came up on us so fast I couldn't maneuver out of his way. He was approaching from our port so we had right of way, though I doubt if he knows, or cares about the rules of the road. I had to give him a blast with our air horn to wake him up and he swerved aft of us at the last possible second, missing us by maybe 10 feet. He hung both our trolled fishing lines. If he had hit us someone would have died, most likely him as Morgan weighs 25,000 pounds and her hull is an inch thick. There is a special place in hell for him, I'm sure.
We spent that night at Peck lake. Amazingly, the boys were too tired to go to the beach and just swam off the boat for a while.
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